There is no doubt that President López Obrador is obsessed with his Mayan train, twice a week he talks about it in the morning, every Monday he presents the progress and every 15 days he makes a supervision tour.
Without a doubt, it is an impressive work that will demonstrate the great capacity of our country and its engineers and workers to build a 1,600-kilometer train in record time.
The problem with the Mayan Train, like the one at the Felipe Ángeles airport and the Dos Bocas refinery, is that it is not certain that they will achieve the expected results. The airport is practically at a standstill and is used only by those who have no other alternative. In the case of the refinery, beyond the fact that its cost was much higher than projected, until now it has not refined a drop of oil and there is no date for it to be able to operate at the capacity that was offered.
I hope I’m wrong, but something similar could happen with the Mayan Train, it is projected that one out of every 10 tourists who arrive in the Cancun area will use it, which is unlikely, and even if this is achieved, the cost of operation will be much greater than the income you earn, without counting the recovery of the investment.
A few days ago, in one of the mornings, the director of FONATUR, responsible for the project, said that the income was guaranteed because it would transport gasoline, that is, instead of building a gas pipeline, a high-speed train is going to be used, which will cost more than 400,000 million pesos to transport gasoline.
The Mayan Train will surely promote the development of the southeast, but there were better ways to invest these resources to develop those states, than a train that can mean a high subsidy for its operation. This type of work should be done with private resources, but since it is most likely that they are a bottomless pit, no private investor was encouraged.
The president has surely dreamed all his life of having a little train, an airport and a refinery, but as I commented in my contribution last week, the almost one billion pesos that have been invested in these whims of the president could have been used more social benefit in education and health, security, and in water, drainage, housing, highways, and public transportation works, which would have created conditions for development and benefited all cities and communities in the country and all Mexicans.
One of the reasons why it has not been possible to reduce inequality and poverty in our country is because governments spend on massive works instead of investing in creating conditions for development and solving the basic demands of the people. As long as an even social floor and conditions for people to develop and have opportunities are not achieved, inequality will continue to grow.
Social programs are necessary to subsidize poverty, but they are not, nor will they be, sufficient to eliminate it, if the difference that exists in access and quality in education, health and services between rich people and poor populations is maintained. In our country there is no longer social mobility, those who are born poor will die poor if we do not equalize social conditions.
The government’s main priority should be to guarantee a level starting floor for everyone and not channel so many resources to projects that don’t work or that could be done by the private sector. The priority must be the people and not the great works to want to go down in history.
The president cannot continue doing what he wants without consulting anyone with government resources, we have to take his checkbook and give it to the states and especially to the municipalities, so that he stops doing his whims and stops dreaming of little trains
